The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Of course. God helps those that help themselves.’

  He nodded again. Why did he keep nodding? And smiling? What was there to smile about?

  ‘And what is it that you do in your work?’

  Jean sat down heavily on the nearest pew. They had sat just here, Dad and Mum and Gladys and Nerys and Edward and little Bertie and her, all of them, Sunday after Sunday and sometimes in the evening too, Dad with the Bible open before him following the pastor’s words. Year after year. Even that winter in the war when Mum had been laid up bad with her feet and Dad had barely been able to stand up because his back was so bad, still they had made the journey to Chapel to thank God for their lives. The Corbetts had worshipped here for forty years, but now they were gone and no one remembered them. It was as though they had never been here at all.

  ‘Nanny. I’m a nanny. For a family. Up west.’

  ‘A nanny, is it?’ he repeated with a raised eyebrow, as though this were a calling located somewhere between a whore and a Catholic. ‘And is it a wealthy family, this family up west, Jean?’

  She nodded. What other sort of family could afford a nanny?

  Mr Lennard—she couldn’t think of him as Pastor—nodded slowly.

  ‘Well. I’m sure their need is great,’ he observed. ‘And will you be returning to us, Jean? Our need is great too, as I’m certain you are aware. Very great. The war has brought such suffering to many and the peacetime has not provided as it should. Not here, at any rate. There is a great deal of work to be done.’

  He looked down at her, coldly, it seemed. Condemningly. She looked away, lowering her eyes.

  ‘Fares, please,’ said the West Indian clippie, scanning the faces of the people on the top deck of the bus. The young man in the hat who had joined at Knightsbridge held out some coins and the conductor cranked up his machine so that a strip of ticket was disgorged and torn off and presented to the passenger. The man took it without looking up. He sat low in his seat watching the street below from beneath the brim of his hat.

  Would she go back?

  Mr Lennard had said a lot of people had suffered. As though it were her fault. As though she were to blame for the suffering of others. But what about her? Hadn’t she suffered? Hadn’t she suffered more than most?

  Today was the 24th of February. The newspapers screamed it from every hoarding but not a single one noted that it was eight years ago today that a rocket had landed on Malacca Row and five families had been wiped out.

  Mr Lennard could keep his suffering and his guilt. There were other important jobs to do. And sometimes God showed you what job had to be done and if that job took you away from the only home you had ever known, well, so be it.

  ‘Sout’ Kensin’ton! Sout’ Kensin’ton!’ sang out the clippie urgently, looking around at the passengers on the top deck as though to warn them that this was their final chance to alight before being sucked forever into Hammersmith and Chiswick.

  Jean started up, caught up in the urgency of the moment, grabbing her bag and diving towards the steps. The young man in the hat stood up too and they became momentarily entangled in the aisle. Jean extricated herself and the man stood aside, murmuring an apology, though it sounded half-hearted, as though his thoughts were elsewhere.

  It was dark as Jean stepped off the bus, crossed Cromwell Place and headed along Old Brompton Road, but at least the pea-souper had mostly gone and she could see the streetlights and know, with reasonable certainty, where she was. Thousands had died, they said, old folk and the sick and babies, of the smog! It was only just now coming out—folk right across the city choking to death! It was hard to imagine. At least with a bomb you could see it, hear it. But this—it was a sort of creeping death.

  Jean shivered and pulled her scarf up over her mouth and took shallow breaths.

  Old Brompton Road was almost deserted. The smog had lifted but, even so, folk were afraid: it might return at any time without warning.

  A man’s footsteps crunched loudly only a few feet behind her and Jean pulled her coat closer around her shoulders and walked a little more quickly. It was safer here than in Wapping, of course, but still, you couldn’t be too careful.

  The footsteps grew louder and closer.

  She saw a young courting couple standing in a doorway ahead and felt a moment of relief. She was safe if other people were around. As she approached the couple they began kissing. The man put his hands on the girl’s shoulders then around her waist and she put her hands beneath his hat, dislodging it, so that it slipped back. Jean could see their mouths, open, their jaws working as though they were eating each other. She reached them and passed them and so did the footsteps behind her. She continued on a few feet until she came to a dress shop, where she paused to look in the window at the expensive French dresses displayed on the mannequins. The footsteps stopped. She looked up then and saw it was the man from the bus. He had paused too, and was now busily lighting a cigarette. A stiff breeze was making it difficult and he had to cup his hand and light match after match to get his cigarette alight.

  Had he really wanted a cigarette, or was he waiting for her to go on?

  She set off again, more quickly this time, waiting for the corner of Palmerston Terrace to come into view. Palmerston Terrace was a short, quiet street, tree-lined, with its own private residents’ garden. You had no business to go down there unless you lived there or in Athelstan Gardens, which led off it. Jean turned down Palmerston Terrace and a moment later the footsteps behind her turned too.

  She felt a moment of panic. Should she run? She was already walking fast; he would know by now that she was on to him. There had been a knife attack on a young girl in Sloane Square only two weeks ago—a man, or two men, had followed the girl home from the bus one evening and accosted her with a knife, threatened her, dragged her into an laneway and attacked her. The girl had survived. The men hadn’t been caught yet.

  There was a policeman standing on the corner of Athelstan Gardens.

  Jean swerved towards him, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. The policeman stood in a circle of light cast by the streetlight and watched impassively as she careered towards him out of the darkness. At the last moment he raised a curious eyebrow and took a step towards her.

  ‘Evening, madam. Ev’thing all right?’

  Jean stopped before him and paused to catch her breath. He was a young constable, just a boy really, his face fresh and clean-shaven, his frame tall but lanky. The huge black dome on his head looked outsized and almost alien. But he was a policeman.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she gasped, looking over her shoulder. ‘I think that man’s followin’ me.’

  They both looked as the young man crossed over Palmerston Terrace and headed off down Athelstan Gardens. He looked up briefly and appeared to take in both policeman and Jean in one expressionless glance. His step didn’t falter and he was soon lost in the darkness.

  ‘D’you know ’im, then? This fella?’ said the policeman.

  ‘No. Never seen ’im before. Except he was on my bus. Got on at Knightsbridge, he did. Sat in front of me, then got off at the same stop. He’s been about three foot behind me all the way from the station.’

  The policeman nodded, though whether this was because he fully understood her predicament and sympathised or because he thought she was a hysterical young girl who had read too many cheap thrillers she couldn’t tell.

  ‘Well, looks like he’s gone now. Want me to go and see where he’s gone?’

  Jean nodded and she waited as the constable loped off down Athelstan Gardens after the young man in the hat. She shivered. She was alone again and it was silent and deserted here on the corner. And standing here beneath the streetlight anyone could see her. Suppose the man had doubled back?

  He didn’t look the sort to carry a knife. But what did the sort to carry a knife look like? The sorts of kids she had just seen hanging around in Wapping, most probably, but they would stick out round here like a dustman at a Buckingham Palace
garden party.

  She could always run into someone’s yard if it came to it—though all the houses looked cold and solidly barred against just such an event. And how much would someone in one of these houses want to help her?

  ‘All safe,’ called the young policeman, emerging from the gloom with a cheery smile. ‘Followed ’im all the way and he went into one of them houses at the end of the street.’ He looked back over his shoulder thoughtfully. ‘Pretty sure we was called to that same house, once. Few months back. Think it was that one, anyway. They all look alike to me.’

  Jean took a deep breath and suddenly felt angry because she’d been so frightened and just because one man had turned out not to be a knife-wielding madman didn’t mean the next one would.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then. Thank you,’ she said to the policeman, as he seemed to be expecting it.

  ‘Not from round ’ere, are ya?’ he said, peering at her in the half light.

  Jean hitched her handbag up over her shoulder and admitted that no, she was not from round here.

  ‘I live ’ere, though,’ she added, just in case he was implying she didn’t belong here.

  ‘Want me to escort you ’ome?’ he suggested, and at once she wondered if he’d suggested this because he didn’t believe her story, or because he thought she might break in to one of the rich houses and steal something?

  ‘No, thank you, I can find me own way.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But I’m often here. This is my beat. PC Clarkson.’

  Jean nodded and hurried off.

  It was freezing. Spring surely wasn’t that far off and yet the tips of the branches on the cherry trees were lined with frost. Her face, despite the cold, was damp with perspiration and she could feel the moisture quickly turning to ice.

  Escort her home, indeed! Fine impression she’d make turning up at the Wallises’ house after her afternoon off with a policeman at her elbow!

  She fumbled for her key and pushed it with shivering fingers into the front door lock. A blast of heat hit her as she stumbled inside. It was wicked how hot they kept the house—rooms that weren’t even used were heated so that it was almost like summer!

  She removed her coat and hat and scarf and hung them up in the cupboard. There were voices upstairs.

  ‘And how does it change anything?’

  It sounded like Mr Wallis.

  Jean paused, halfway up the stairs, but there came no reply, so she continued upwards. The drawing room door was ajar and beyond it she could see Mr Wallis standing over by the fireplace, tall and erect, his hands clenched behind his back, his face slightly flushed. She paused. If she moved he would notice her. She had never seen him angry before, never seen him anything but affable, occasionally friendly, often distracted.

  Now she saw there was a second man in the drawing room, and it was him! The young man from the bus, sitting there as bold as brass, in the Wallises’ drawing room! He was still wearing his beige overcoat, but he had removed his hat, which he held tightly in his hands, and for the first time she could see his face.

  It was the face of the man who had embraced Mrs Wallis in the garden.

  Yes, of course it was. Stupid not to have realised before. Mrs Wallis’s lover! Come to confront her husband—or be confronted by him.

  The rasp of a cigarette lighter and the abrupt and unmistakable waft of a du Maurier indicated the two men were not alone.

  ‘For God’s sake, Cecil. Everything has changed. That is the point.’ It was Mrs Wallis, her presence obscured till now by the door.

  ‘The law may have changed, but people’s opinions have not,’ replied Mr Wallis, to which Mrs Wallis responded with an angry noise.

  ‘The law reflects public opinion. The law is made by the people,’ she explained patiently.

  Jean considered this. That the law could be a thing made by the people was a strange idea. A rich person’s idea.

  ‘Look here, Wallis. I’m not naïve enough to think all people’s opinions have changed overnight,’ said the young man, speaking for the first time, and he had a BBC voice, the same voice as Mr and Mrs Wallis.

  ‘The fact remains,’ the young man continued, ‘I shall no longer need to remain … incognito.’

  ‘You mean to announce your return in The Times, then?’ said Mr Wallis.

  ‘No, of course he doesn’t,’ said Mrs Wallis impatiently. ‘He simply means he no longer has to risk imprisonment. He can apply for this certificate of protection.’

  A certificate of protection? Could an adulterer get such a thing?

  ‘Well, I am sorry, but I am unable to offer you any assistance,’ said Cecil with finality.

  They had come to the cuckolded husband for help? Jean almost felt sorry for him.

  ‘You are perfectly able to assist, Cecil,’ retorted Mrs Wallis. ‘You are simply choosing not to.’

  There was a silence. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly.

  ‘And what sort of firm do you think will want to take him on, eh?’ said Mr Wallis at last. ‘What kind of employer, when there are good men out there who have served their country?’

  Inside the drawing room there was a thud as though something had fallen over, footsteps muffled by the thick carpet, the rasp of a match being struck.

  ‘I’m sorry, Freddie, but surely you must see how it is?’ he continued.

  ‘I see exactly how it is,’ replied the lover—Freddie—in a strange voice, almost bored. ‘Must have been tough for you during the war, old man, going off to the office each day while every other fellow was on foreign soil fighting for his damned life.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ replied Cecil sharply. ‘I refuse to discuss this further. You will kindly leave my house immediately.’

  Jean moved through the open door of the breakfast room and closed it behind her just as the drawing room door opened. She stood perfectly still as angry footsteps passed her, then hurried down the stairs. A moment later other, lighter, footsteps followed.

  ‘Freddie! Freddie, wait!’ It was Mrs Wallis. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be such an idiot!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harri,’ the young man replied from some way down the stairs. ‘I refuse to be insulted by—by him. This was a mistake—a stupid, blasted mistake. Lord knows how I let you talk me into it.’

  ‘Please,’ said Mrs Wallis, ‘just—just telephone me tomorrow when you are little calmer.’ Jean couldn’t hear the man’s reply, but a moment later she heard Mrs Wallis return to the drawing room.

  Jean opened the breakfast room door and peered out. The coast was clear. She ventured out.

  ‘Well, are you satisfied?’ demanded Mrs Wallis indistinctly. She had closed the drawing room door after her this time. Jean found herself glued to the same spot on the carpet.

  ‘I cannot believe you put me in such a—a compromising position!’ said Mr Wallis.

  ‘You feel compromised, do you? This is Freddie’s life we are discussing, not some awkward social faux pas.’

  ‘For God’s sake, how can you be so damned naïve, Harriet? I know he’s your brother, but you can’t let that blind you to the facts.’

  Her brother.

  ‘I understand the facts of this situation perfectly, Cecil. Do not patronise me.’

  ‘All I am saying, Harriet, is that public opinion has not changed. It was the same after the last war, no matter what you may think, no matter what law the government may have passed—and, for God’s sake, if it wasn’t Coronation year do you think there would ever have been an amnesty?’

  The amnesty. The young man—Mrs Wallis’s brother—was a deserter. Jean stepped back from the room. She had no desire to hear any more.

  ‘It would be so easy for you to help him,’ said Mrs Wallis indistinctly. ‘All he needs is a job in some dull little insurance firm, some boring city bank. All he needs is a reference, a word from you. Is that so much to ask?’

  There was a silence—thick and heavy. It was broken by a slow intake of breath.

  ‘What
kind of a man are you?’

  ‘The kind of man who has standards, Harriet. Moral standards. And I will not compromise those standards. I simply will not.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  The door opened and had Mrs Wallis turned right rather than gone down the stairs she would have seen the nanny disappearing into the breakfast room at some speed. In another moment the front door opened and closed with a slam.

  Jean waited behind the door. Mrs Wallis’s brother was a deserter. Well, and so were hundreds, thousands of other men. Everyone knew someone whose son or friend or cousin had done a bunk. The streets round home were crawling with them: men who only emerged at night and who scuttled about with their collars turned up and one eye always behind them. But those men were just kids, boys from poor families, from the slums. Not Freddie. He was one of Them. You never heard of one of Them deserting.

  But why should he get an amnesty? Did any of those dead young men get another chance? Did the families killed in the Blitz get a second go?

  The drawing room door opened and Mr Wallis went into his study and closed the door behind him, and from the shadows Jean stood and watched.

  And what had Mr Wallis done while other folk risked their lives? He had worked in an office. Sent others to their deaths and gone home for his tea.

  Chapter Eighteen

  MARCH 1953

  A black cab drew up outside Cecil’s office just off Chancery Lane and Harriet paid the driver and got out, closing the door behind her and smoothing down her dress. It was a pleasant spring morning. One almost didn’t need a coat. A scattering of early blossoms was visible on the trees in the little park opposite. A young couple sat on the bench in the park laughing and tearing off pieces of bread and tossing them to the pigeons.

  Harriet pulled out her cigarette case, took out a cigarette and lit it carefully.

  She had found Freddie a position. It hadn’t been easy. Three weeks of masterfully arranged dinner parties with some of the dullest men in England and their dreadfully dreary wives, of opportune conversations during intervals at the theatre, of sitting through the most ghastly charity lunches and writing fat cheques for everyone’s pet charity from Yugoslavian orphans to elderly pit ponies. And the phone calls! There had been too many to count. But it had finally paid off. She had, to put it somewhat vulgarly, ‘hit the jackpot’.